


Full Circle

by kuro49



Category: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is probably a punch line or two that follows when they walk into a room. In place of a joke though, there is just politics.</p><p>But ain't that the same damn thing when you think about it at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> this is written with one viewing so everything is iffy.
> 
> but i got to deal with this dry writing spell somehow.

Rone knows the score.

Like every callous in his upturned palms.

One of these days, he will be kept inside his grave.

A quick glance around the Annex and it seems like the rest of his boys know this for a fact too. And yes, it might only be a couple of days into their stay here where they are still trying to carve their place out among the CIA agents but they are already his boys. For the next however many months they are contracted to be here, they are _his_.

Their handshakes are firm, a bit showy. But all of them are former special ops, Army Rangers and Marines and Navy SEALs, cooped up within the same complex. No one expects any less when every last one of their grins is a little bit menacing.

 

There is probably a punch line or two that follows when they walk into a room. In place of a joke though, there is just politics.

But ain't that the same damn thing when you think about it at all.

 

In the days that follow, they play babysitters with the biggest guns.

 

They have one eye on their agent and another on everything else.

Oz can't tell the good stuff from the bad even with Rone right there next to him.

The bag of the beans is bitter and bitter and Oz takes a gulp of the fresh brew just to have something burning hot and strong going down. If he can't be caught drinking on the job, this is hardly the worst thing he has swallowed down. Its worth all means relatively little to him other than the face Rone makes, offended at the way his good brew is being wasted on a palate like Oz's.

The man just gives him a grin that is more teeth than lips and endures the sharp kick from under the table in good nature. Oz has always liked the way the punches are never quite pulled back when it comes down to just them.

 

Teamwork is a very funny thing in a place like this.

And camaraderie takes on a very different meaning.

What Rone means is that Boon tolerates them (even Tanto when he gets it in his head that he is funnier than he really is), and that is as close as to say that Boon _likes_ them at all.

It still is genuine surprise to everyone else when Boon is always the last to leave the same confines as Tanto when he turns his music up and loud enough to direct half of Libya's population to their exact location. 

 

In the night that follows, well, they haven't quite got there yet.

 

The curtains that pull out between their cots are a very frail understanding of privacy when the room is shared with an upwards of five blokes. Not all of them have the same understanding of decency. Not remotely close.

They learn quick.

They have to.

Or they are waking up to someone's idea of a funny joke that only gets funnier and funnier as time passes.

(Until years later, if even half of you make it until then it would be a feat, it is the funniest thing.)

 

Take away the politics. Take away the ammunition and the guns.

And what do you have left?

They don't know the answer to that. If they are smarter men, well, they probably wouldn't even be here in the first place. But that is still something to be said. They only know that blood is all the same colour red.

Sweat falling into his eyes, dirt and grit being ingrained into his skin, the smell of nothing but black smoke filling his nose. Tig can offer up all the prayers he can give. But it is still that same damn score out here: Nobody wins.

 

In the dark that follows, where it feels like it could just about stretch on forever, they fire shot after shot and try not to think about a damn thing outside of making the next one.

All those little raised star burst scars that didn't just leave them in their graves, here they are with their trigger fingers and their whole bodies full of shrapnel the doctors decided aren't worth their while.

It is not living. It never is when it comes to surviving.

And then the mortars start to fall.

 

When Jack Da Silva arrives on Libyan soil, Rone can’t help but feel like a circle is drawn in full.

It is probably a foolish feeling to have, settling right next to where that little sentence Boon's pulled out from another book he has in his calloused hands. But if he already has all the heavens and all the hells within him, what is one more foolish thing.

Rone has never once claimed otherwise. He is, after all, a fool through and through.

But that goes for every single one of them too.

 

In the morning light and the silence that follow, he becomes theirs to come home.


End file.
